EA is running a viral campaign for Dante’s Inferno revolving around a spoof prayer simulation game and an app to hand down divine judgment on Facebook friends.
The spoof game is Mass We Pray, with a video and micro-site designed to look like it s selling a church-themed game for Nintendo Wii. The Wii references come from cross-shaped motion-sensing remotes and a Wii Balance Board-like accessory for kneeling to pray. The video is fittingly campy, trying to channel the usual production value and tone viewers would expect from religious inspired content. Yet its obvious satire aside, it never exposes itself as pitching a fake game, nor does it link itself directly to Dante s Inferno. It’s only once viewers try to query other information off of the Mass We Pray site, such as browsing screen shots, that a new trailer for Dante s Inferno launches to expose the gig.
The Mass We Pray video has by all accounts gone successfully viral, drawing more than 486,000 views on YouTube at the time of this post. EA is now trying to further engage that traffic with a Facebook campaign. Once the Dante’s Inferno video is launched on the Mass We Pray site, viewers are encouraged to download a Facebook app that lets them banish friends or foes to hell. EA is also getting ready to launch an iPhone version of the app.
You can check it all out starting at the campaign gateway at Mass We Pray.
